


A Shadow of All Sounds

by klytaemnestra (klytae)



Series: Midgar Blues - A Collection of Shinra Noir [18]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25305658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klytae/pseuds/klytaemnestra
Summary: He sits alone in the shadows of this place, watching as the evening sun dips beneath the watery horizon and accepts with a cruel certainty that he should not be the one left alive at the end of the world.
Relationships: Rufus Shinra/Tseng
Series: Midgar Blues - A Collection of Shinra Noir [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915873
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	A Shadow of All Sounds

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Adonais by Shelley.

Tseng will remember the end of the world in flashes of light and darkness, the green glow of the Lifestream, voices hushed and worried, the dull hum of the planet, and the familiar smile of a girl.

He languishes in a coma for 38 days, trapped between the Lifestream, his condition so vastly deteriorated that for some time none thought he’d pull through. The wound left by Masamune too grievous to be healed entirely by materia. By the time Tseng is pulled from the temple, he’s lost far too much blood. Vincent Valentine cradles his head, advising his compatriots to help him settle Tseng’s body just so. He groans, hand curling around the former Turk’s arm, and sighs the name, ‘Rufus.’

When he wakes, he’s alone. A place somewhere near Mideel from the looks of it, his room a makeshift infirmary. He assesses his situation and tries to call out, but all that comes forth is a dry croak before the drugs pull him back into unconsciousness.

The second time he wakes, he’s met by a familiar face. Elena. He watches as she moves in a blur of blonde, and dark suiting, calling out, before moving closer to lean over him. ‘Sir?’ she might be smiling, maybe crying a little. He looks up at her through the haze and weakly returns the smile as she threads their fingers together and squeezes.

Elena brings him water, soft eyes kind and a little expectant as she settles to sit once more at his bedside.

He speaks after a while, parched throat cracking on the words. ‘I’d hate to know you’ve been waiting here for me to wake up, Elena.’

She looks a little flushed at the statement. ‘No, Sir. Just doing my duty as a Turk, Sir.’

She fills him in on the happenings while he’s been here. Sephiroth, Meteor, though she hesitates, looks away, chewing her lip momentarily in thought, before asking, ‘What do you remember?’

He remembers enough to know how he came to be in this place, the wound left by Sephiroth’s blade should have been fatal, but that was not to be his fate. And so here he has remained while mankind’s survival was waged against insurmountable odds, to be saved by Holy merging with the planet’s Lifesteam. He accepts that the Lifestream rising is the only reason he, too, has survived.

Her smile is sad, then, eyes averting his. ‘Do you need anything? Food? Coffee?’ She laughs a little, brushing an errant strand of blonde from her brow. ‘Booze?’

Elena returns with a mug of coffee a short while later.

They’re at an inn on the southern continent, the spare guesthouse paid for in full for the next month. Communications have been down since Meteorfall, but the small mako powered radio in Tseng’s jacket pocket had still been operational, an unnoticed blip as Weapons tore themselves from the earth and the heavens had threatened to rain down upon them. Its tiny persistent transmission had been enough to locate him once the planet had gone suddenly quiet.

She sits with him for a bit, listening for Reno and Rude to return, feeling rather out of sorts at the strange familiarity of it all. A week ago, Tseng was dead, another casualty lost to Sephiroth’s madness and Shinra’s sins. And now. It fills her with a type of anticipatory trepidation because nothing will ever be the same.

She starts suddenly at the sound of her name.

Tseng sets the mug aside, eyes meeting hers. ‘How’s Midgar?’

She falters, ‘Sir. I think you’d better talk to Reno and Rude about that.’ They’d ridden Meteorfall out within the lower floors of the Shinra building, some fools errand to retrieve sensitive company files from the mainframe. She had not seen the city’s destruction, and even had she, Elena isn’t equipped to do this. Not the way the other two can. ‘I’m going to go see what we can scratch up for dinner, Sir. I’ll be back to check on you.’ She straightens, forces a smile, hand lingering against his for a moment. ‘Just call if you need me.’

Tseng wakes again, this time to hushed voices, and the clamour of dishes and cutlery in the kitchen.

He can hear Reno and Rude discussing something just outside the door, and wonders what damage they could have possibly done in the wake of the world ending. In the end it’s Rude who comes to him, Reno hovers in the hall, listening, waiting.

‘Elena won’t tell me what happened to Midgar.’ Tseng says after a minute. Dark eyes narrowing as he sees the way Rude seems uncommonly falter at the statement. ‘What aren’t you telling me? I know judging by the state of things, it can’t be good.’

‘Midgar’s gone. Meteorfall.’

Tseng has to muster all his years of training, that calm facade forced into place as he prepares to ask the question that’s been lingering on his tongue since the moment he found himself alive in this place. ‘And Rufus?’

There is the barest of hesitation, Rude unreadable as ever behind dark shades. He reaches a gloved hand up, pulls them away and looks down at Tseng with a look that could be nothing short of sympathetic.

‘Where is he?’ Tseng's voice takes on a slight urgency. It is no secret to at least two of his fellow Turks that his relationship with Rufus is more than strictly professional.

‘The President is dead.’

_Dead._

For a moment Tseng looks lost, as if unable to process what he’s been told. No. No. Rufus was supposed to be safe, safe in Midgar, inside his building, secure, and protected, and--

‘The upper floors of the Shinra building are gone. He died defending Midgar. None of us could have persuaded him to leave.’

The news breaks upon him, hands suddenly fighting against the IV in his wrist, clawing at the bandages tightly wound about his torso, ripping open newly knitted flesh. Reno is inside in an instance, arms around his boss’s shoulders, as his partner tries to restrain his arms. He remembers them shouting for Elena, and then nothingness.

When he awakes some time later he is once more alone. He thinks of Rude’s words. _The President is dead._ He had not been there to protect him there in the end, in that he has failed his singular duty. He curls onto his side and sobs silently into his hands.

Hours later Reno appears outside the threshold holding a mug of what Tseng presumes is tea.

‘Here.’

He eyes Reno suspiciously.

‘If I wanted to drug you I’d just slip it into your IV, boss.’

He takes a sip of the tea, the heat of it nearly scalding against his tongue.

‘We wanted to tell you. But it’s been a lot.’ Reno rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as if to relieve some tension there. They had tried to get back to the upper floors, but the building was simply too unstable past the 61st floor, and attempts to search the building from above had proven futile. If Rufus Shinra had been inside his office at the moment of impact, there was little chance of survival. He remembers shouting his name as Rude kept the bird hovering above the wreckage. The executive office little more than smouldering ruins collapsing in on the lower floors. There had been no remains to retrieve, whatever was left of the late President of Shinra lay buried beneath a mound of rubble, steel, and concrete, and marble.

It makes Reno’s throat seize painfully. For their shared differences, Rufus Shinra had been not only his boss, but a friend. It’s hard to imagine that hostile brat, whose liquor cabinet he’d much enjoyed raiding, gone. ‘I’m not good with this shit, yanno.’ He thinks of the times in which any of them required comforting, and shit, he’s really not good at this at all. ‘We just want you to know, me ‘n Rude, and Laney, too. You’re not alone.’ Reno reaches out to lay his hand against Tseng’s shoulder knowing it’s a calculated gamble. Tseng has never been one for emotions, but Rufus is another matter entirely. He doesn’t know when it shifted, per se, only that it did, and whatever that blonde kid had done to get under Tseng’s skin this way, it wasn’t going away any time soon.

Tseng stares at the mug in his hand as if in a daze. At least he’s no longer lashing out.

Reno stands there in silence for a while, waiting, hoping that Tseng might acknowledge him, do anything for that matter aside from stare blankly at that damned mug.

‘Well, good talk boss. We’re here, yanno. If you need anything.’ Reno backs out the door, and is halfway down the hall when he hears the mug shattering against the wall. Well, looks like Tseng had picked up at least a few of his lover’s coping mechanisms. 

He speaks to Rude in a hushed voice, both speculating about the state of Tseng’s mental well being. He’s calm, eerily so aside from the occasional outburst, and it’s only a matter of time before that comes to a head. He’s seen Tseng angry, after a mission gone awry, or in the weeks following Rufus’ betrayal years before, but he has always been a man of very carefully controlled emotions, and Reno fears what might lay beneath if that carefully constructed wall of defense were ever breached.

Days pass, Tseng slowly begins to regain his strength, the IV no longer required, wound healing nicely with twice weekly doses of cure materia. He’s lost some weight, and his stamina is shot to hell, but he drags himself from his bed one afternoon, and walks into the kitchen, requesting something strong to drink. Elena has just returned from a supply mission to Kalm. Reeve Tuesti had run out right as the Shinra helicopter had made its accent, waving down Elena to stop only seconds too late. She speaks of the former Director of Urban Development to the others, but communications are still down between the continents, so whatever he needs from the Turks will have to wait until their next supply run.

Reno and Rude have gone out, leaving her alone to hold down the fort. She eyes Tseng with concerned brown eyes. ‘You sure you need to be up, Sir? I can get you whatever you want.’

Tseng winces a little as he pulls up a chair at the kitchen table. ‘I’m quite capable, thank you, Elena.’

Elena returns a moment later with a bottle of whiskey. Some swill from Gongaga, hardly the stuff Tseng’s used to, but she pours them each a glass, and settles across from her boss--former boss? With no Shinra left, are they even still Turks, she wonders. She downs the first glass in one go, something to take the edge off her nerves. She’d been giddy like a school girl around Tseng, but now, after all this, his presumed death, the world ending, and then there’s the matter of--

‘I’m sorry about your … I didn’t …’

‘It’s all right, Elena. Very few did.’ He follows her lead, lifting the glass, swallowing the amber liquid in one burning gulp. 

She pours them both another.

By the time the others return, they’re both half a bottle in laughing over some story from Tseng’s early days as a rookie. She’s leaning forward, chin in hand hanging onto each word rapturously.

‘I’m sure President Rufus must have been insufferable.’ She blurts out before she can stop herself.

Tseng’s posture goes rigid as Reno, Rude, and Elena all look on in collective horror at her slip. Tseng says nothing, rising from his place at the table, giving Elena a respectful nod, before retreating back to the privacy of his room.

There’s an anger within him now, a rage that he can barely contain each time he thinks of Rufus there, inside that glass tower, unfaltering, unwilling to leave. Had he been afraid in those finals moments. He closes his eyes, drawing in a few steadying breaths, and forces himself to believe the end had been swift.

He takes an extra dose of painkillers before bed, and wishes for a dreamless sleep, not one plagued by Rufus Shinra wandering lost among the ruins of his city. But he does dream, of silk fine golden hair, and blue eyes, the softly wicked smile of his lover, he dreams of Rufus alive in his arms, lips upon his, body moving in a sinuous line above him. He wakes alone to the darkness, hard with longing, and weeps silent tears.

The days pass without notice, Tseng moving about their small shared space. He observes how they all watch him with concerned eyes.

He thumbs through his wallet one afternoon. The only thing left of his former life. There are a few charge cards, his Shinra ID card. A small folded photo of Rufus is tucked away in the billfold. Taken in an unguarded moments years before while on holiday in Costa del Sol, Rufus staring out across the waves from his private balcony, blonde hair wind tousled. His fingertips linger on the image before he reverently tucks it away. And then, the keycard. Rufus’ Junon apartment. Snugly beside the one that had unlocked his lover’s rooms on the 69th floor. He stares at the small innocuous metal cards, thinks for a moment of destroying them both. There is no Shinra building to go back to, the apartment set high above the plate destroyed in the blast, along with all memories and traces of their time together. And Junon. He thinks it must feel like a mausoleum now, the only lasting testament to the fact that Rufus Shinra had once lived. Not the life of President or Vice President, the one splashed across tabloids and glossy magazines, but the quiet, private, secluded life they had shared during those days when Tseng would escape Midgar and find Rufus willing and waiting. His throat seizes painfully at the memory, but he wonders if perhaps he might find closure were he to return, to say his goodbyes to the man who had become his singular duty and care.

None of them try to stop him, Tseng determined in his resolve. He thanks them for their help, their loyalty, and friendship. There are tears in Elena’s eyes, and Rude’s hand lingers just a little too long on Tseng’s shoulder.

It’s nearly nightfall by the time he arrives. Junon has not seen the influx of refugees, and with supplies in high demand, shipping seems all but unaffected. None of the officers still stationed here give him much notice. So many of Shinra’s former employees have been displaced, what’s a Turk aside from a relic of a failed era. He says nothing as he passes, into the closed corridors, knowing the way as if he had never left.

A quick swipe of his keycard as he draws in a lasting breath.

Stepping through the door, it's all as he remembers. As though any moment from now Rufus might emerge from the bedroom, clad in little more than a silken robe, and greet him with a kiss. Often they’d fucked then, barely able to contain their need after weeks apart, Rufus pinned against the door as Tseng would drive into him from behind, and then later once their passions were sated they would lie together and talk in private ways.

Tseng moves about the apartment in a daze. He had last been here during Rufus’ inauguration. They had a fancy suite reserved at the Junon Imperial Leviathan Hotel, but he’d come here to retrieve a pair of cufflinks Rufus had forgotten.

There’s an empty tumbler on the counter, whatever liquor in it has evaporated, but he can see the fine outline of where Rufus’ lips had pressed against its crystal rim. The cushions on the sofa a little askew. A book left open page down on the coffee table as if he had set it down for a moment and never returned.

The bedroom is untouched, and Tseng knows Rufus must have spent whatever time here on the sofa, too engrossed in his duty to allow himself the luxury of uninterrupted sleep.

His fingertips brush along the soft comforter as he envisions his lover stretched out languidly before him.

Tseng lays across the bed and tries to imagine what his life might be now that Rufus Shinra is no longer alive. He sobs dryly into the bedsheets, the wracking tremors causing the wound to seize up and ache.

It feels almost like desecration to touch any of it, but he does, he lifts the cologne, breathes it in, the fine strands of blonde left in a hairbrush, the silken robe hanging on the bathroom door still smelling faintly of him. He finds a note tucked away in the top drawer of Rufus’ desk, fingers trace over the familiar script as he begins to understand that Rufus had spent the weeks following his disappearance here. They run together in broken sentences, Rufus putting into words the emotions he could not reveal.

He sets it aside. He should have been there.

He doesn’t know why he’s returned here, surrounded by the ghostly reminders of his lover except that there is no gravesite, no body to mourn. He never once believed he might outlive Rufus, that his singular duty had always been to protect him without hesitation, to die in the line of duty if necessary. And now …

He sits alone in the shadows of this place, watching as the evening sun dips beneath the watery horizon and accepts with a cruel certainty that he should not be the one left alive at the end of the world.

There are long walks along the docks, recalling the days they had spent here together, as Tseng thinks of the way Rufus looked, his profile silhouetted against the setting sun as he would stare out across the harbour. It fills Tseng with a low ache. Their time here had not been ideal, fraught early on with the lingering anger of betrayal, until they had eventually slipped into a comfortable familiarity not afforded them in Midgar. Lazy afternoons spent in one another’s arms, long weekends when they could cast off their respective duties, rank, and protocol.

Tseng returns to the apartment after a long while, and imagines that Rufus might still be here. He takes the silken robe from the bathroom, and holds it close, inhaling the scent of him. He thinks of Rufus there before him, robe left tantalizingly undone to reveal pale smooth skin, the way the cool fabric would flutter against his thighs as Rufus straddled him, warm and wanton and begging to be fucked. He palms the aching hardness between his legs. He’s barely touched himself since he awoke to this nightmare world, the weight of loss too great, but here in this moment he pretends. Deft hands freeing his cock from the confines of his trousers, wrapping around the heavy length as he thinks of Rufus, the sound of his voice when Tseng hit that spot just so, the filth that would slide from his lover’s mouth while they fucked.

He lays there in the aftermath, staring at the ceiling as darkness settles around him, listening to the mournful echoes of buoys in the waves, and feels nothing but a slow creeping numbness.

Nothing will ever be the same, he accepts. The things that have given his life purpose are simply no more, and he will either have to adapt, or give up.

Two days later he stands on the docks as the wind whips about him, and throws his keycard to Rufus’ Shinra rooms into the harbour, watches the silver rectangle catch the light for the briefest of seconds before vanishing into the dark watery depths. He hesitates for a moment longer, considers tossing his ID in, as well, freeing himself of his duty, of his past. Instead he returns, pours himself a drink, and sits in quiet silence. He questions if he ever freed himself from the grasp of the Lifestream to return to the world of the living or if this is simply his punishment for his many sins, to remain trapped in between life and death with his guilt and regret.

The sun is low on the horizon when he hears it. The familiar sound of the lock disengaging. He’s on his feet in an instance, peacemaker levelled at the door. The figure is silhouetted against the light. But Tseng would know it anywhere. The familiar lines, the slope of those shoulders. ‘Sir?’

There’s the metallic sound of a keycard clattering to the floor, along with the thump of what appears to be scant luggage as the figure moves through the threshold into the dimly lit room, and then buckles. Tseng catches him before he crumples to the floor, disbelieving as he stares down at the stark white face of the man he now cradles against him, hands trembling just slightly as he brushes them against his brow. ‘Rufus?’

Light eyes open in a slow blink to meet Tseng’s, and he feels as if his heart might burst with it. Rufus is gaunt and pale, but warm and whole and _alive_. A part of him is still fearful that this is nothing more than a spectral vision sent to torment him.

‘You’re dead.’

‘So are you, Sir.’

Rufus might be laughing, face buried against Tseng’s collarbone, hands tangled in dark strands of silk. ‘How?’

‘I’m not entirely certain myself.’ He looks down at the face before him, and smiles at the way the colour slowly returns to Rufus’ cheeks. He dearly wants to kiss him, but he settles Rufus against the floor and moves to retrieve his dropped keycard and luggage, before closing the door. He watches the way Rufus props himself up on one arm and winces. So perhaps not as unscathed as he had hoped.

‘They told me you were dead.’ Rufus says once more after a moment, eyes a little haunted as if remembering those words.

Tseng reaches down to offer Rufus a hand, pulling him upright, steadying as he adjusts to regain his bearings.

‘I suspect I nearly was.’ Knows that had Vincent Valentine had not pulled him from the temple and administered a dose of Cure, he would not have survived. He looks at Rufus, the way he seems to favour one leg, eyes as painfully blue as he remembers, but the gaze unfocused. He pulls him close with a fierce possessiveness, feels the way Rufus twines his arms about him, and holds him. Rufus still smells of rosemary and bergamot, and when Tseng leans down at last to kiss him, he tastes the same.

When they part, he takes Rufus’ face in his hands, studies the way his left eye doesn’t quite meet his, and leans forward to press his lips against the delicate eyelid, feels the flesh tremble beneath his kiss. He presses another to the scar at Rufus’ wrist, then the other ‘Forgive me for leaving you alone.’

Rufus gives a dismissive toss of his head, but his voice is not unkind, ‘You couldn’t have stopped it.’

No, Tseng suspects he could not, but he should have been there. He does not ask of the state of his injuries, though he worries, knowing that whatever has happened to his lover has not only had physical challenges, and there is still a hostility about Rufus. They will discuss this all in time, he kisses Rufus again, this time tinged with a certain desperation. He pulls away when Rufus abruptly tenses beneath him, sees the way he now averts his eyes. ‘Rufus?’ Tseng seems to understand in that moment. Rufus has always been perfect, and deeply vain.

  
Tseng steps back, hands deftly unbuttoning his shirt to reveal the scar beneath, an angry red mark running along his torso, and places Rufus’ bare hand against it, watching the way his brow creases in worry as fingertips trace against it.

‘We all have our scars, Sir.’ Rufus is beautiful, has always been beautiful, and to Tseng he will always be.

It is Rufus who initiates the kiss this time, free hand clutching at the nape of Tseng’s neck as he pulls him closer, tongue sliding into the wet heat of Tseng’s mouth. His voice is low when he finally withdraws. ‘Fuck me.’

Tseng is more than willing to comply. He cannot bite back the sound he makes when he enters Rufus, the familiar sensation of being gripped by the yielding heat of his body.

It is as if a strange type of mourning, the sounds of passion a substitution for tears, honouring one another with obsequies in the form of kisses, Tseng’s mouth against Rufus’ racing pulse swearing oaths to ancient gods as his weight bears down on him driving into his lover with renewed intensity, each movement deliberate, penetrating in long deep thrusts because it’s simply still not enough. Rufus is laid out beneath him, head thrown back against the rug, sharp cries mingling with gasps and pleas for more.

It is over too soon, Rufus shuddering in his release as Tseng gives one last thrust and stills.

They lay together, Rufus left heart pounding and breathless. Fingertips ghost along the scar. ‘I’m sorry.’ He breathes unsure of what exactly it is he’s apologizing for, but Shinra is to blame for this. His name, his blood.

‘It’s not your fault.’ Tseng replies, hand smoothing along the curve of his lover’s neck and down his shoulder, memorizing by touch the feel of bone and muscle. How fragile Rufus is, how easily he could have lost him, could still lose him.

When Rufus speaks again his voice is almost mournful, ‘I let you go.’

‘No.’ The word is final as the former Turk buries his lips in the soft golden hair at the nape of Rufus’ neck. He will not have his lover grieving over what might have been no matter how much he understands. There will be time yet for regrets, but in this moment Tseng wishes to hold Rufus Shinra close, and remember only that they are alive.

_fin_


End file.
